When Adam Bryant of The New York Times recently interviewed Lofton, he asked: "What kind of advice do you give to new college grads?"

Lofton told Bryant he gives many talks to students and almost always closes by telling them this:

"Take a blank sheet of paper and an envelope, write down a goal of something that they want to do over the coming year, then seal it. Nobody's ever going to see this except you, I tell them — it's not for your teachers; it's not for your parents; it's just for yourself."

Then a year later, he told Bryant, "you take it out and grade yourself on whether you worked toward that goal, and then you set a new goal for the next year."

Of course, this doesn't guarantee that you'll actually achieve the goal in the first year or two — but it can help keep you motivated enough to get there eventually.

Lofton told Bryant that this exercise is really just to get 20-somethings in the habit of "looking at the things they need to work on, setting a personal goal, and then seeing how they've done against that goal."